Introduction for Gary Berg-Cross

Workshop on Science Metrics, Classifications, & Mapping Standards Aug.

11-12, 2011. Gary Berg-Cross, Cognitive Psychologist

Introduction for Gary Berg-Cross

Knowledge [email protected]



PreAmble…..• I’m a Cognitive Psychologist, interested in the role of comprehension,

how knowledge is acquired and used.• I’ve worked in AI, intelligent system design & knowledge engineering.

– One of the fundamental problems is the challenge of handling better formalization of semantics and pragmatics while simultaneously being more faithful to natural systems and systems of thought.

• My current project involves helping geo-scientist communities collaborate to share information, integrate knowledge and solve common problems.

Formal Theory Natural Systems



Current Work on NSF INTEROP Grant Spatial Ontology Community of Practice (SOCoP see socop.org) an Interdisciplinary Network to Support Geospatial Data Sharing, Integration, and Interoperability

• Geospatial data are needed for many types of applications such as the geoWeb along with emerging interdisciplinary areas that require collaboration.

• But re-using this data is difficult due in part to semantic heterogeneity resulting from different community views.

• We work on ontology products & semantic technologies to help with semantic interoperability.

GeoSPARQLSpatial Relations

Events

Feature Types

Geometry

Classified geospatial data sets:biology, geology, soil, forestry,

Agricultural, etc.

Various knowledge sources:Human world (commonsense)robot world (programmed, emergent)Geo-knowledge (GML, other standards)Spatial domain (spatial calculi, ontologies)GeoSciences Disciplines(geography, earth science etc.) Language (linguistics)



Geospatial information is an important kind– Geometry (Precise), Features, Maps, Categories, Imprecise GeoScience Models

A polygonal area. <meta name="DC.coverage.spatial.region" content="1 1, 4 2, 5 4, 3 6, 2 3, 1 1"> Some precise math used for the geometry/shape of “features”

Space

Real & HumanRealm Objects

Boundary Boxes For Natural Regions



Classification Example - Traditional land cover taxonomy (Source - Ola Ahlqvist OSU)

• Easily translated to an ontology description language as class-subclass relations and class specific properties

• But no agreement on a unified taxonomy –categories change to accommodate agricultural themes, climate change etc. – CORINE & GlobCover &MODIS/IGBP

• Not even our USGS system could stay the same from one time to the other – National Land Cover Data (NLCD) used slightly different classes

in 1992 and 2001• Note: SSoil classifications have similar issues

– http://www.itc.nl/~rossiter/research/rsrch_ss_class.html



11 Open Water

21 Low Intensity Residential

22 High Intensity Residential

23 Commercial/Industrial/Transport.

32 Quarries/Strip Mines/Gravel Pits

33 Transitional

41 Deciduous Forest

42 Evergreen Forest

43 Mixed Forest

81 Pasture/Hay

82 Row Crops

85 Urban/Recreational Grasses

91 Woody Wetlands

92 Emergent Herbaceous Wetlands

0 5 10 15 20

Kilometers

t

Land CoverChester County, PA

1992

11 Open Water21 Developed, Open Space22 Developed, Low Intensity23 Developed, Medium Intensity24 Developed, High Intensity31 Barren Land (Rock/Sand/Clay)41 Deciduous Forest42 Evergreen Forest43 Mixed Forest81 Pasture/Hay82 Cultivated Crops90 Woody Wetlands95 Emergent Herbaceous Wetlands

0 5 10 15 20

Kilometers

t

Land CoverChester County, PA

2001

National Land Cover Data (NLCD) 92-01 PA change example

Different classification systems create problems!Ahlqvist, O., 2008, Extending post classification change detection using semantic similarity metrics to overcome class heterogeneity: a study of 1992 and 2001 National land Cover Database changes, Remote Sensing of Environment, 112(3):1226-1241

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0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

0 20 40 60 80 100Canopy cover (%)

Tre

e h

eig

ht

(m) Sudan

UNESCO

Tanzania

Jamaica

Zimbabwe

Turkey

United States

Estonia

China

Same issues around global definitions of “forest”

Adds Life forms, leaf phenology, water cycle



Dr. Tawan BanchuenSchool of EnvironmentUniversity of Auckland



Understanding is Complicated:Geo-Social-Temporal Semantics of Potholes

• To understand a Domain we start with general usage of terms within the domain• Area feature - A geographic entity that encloses a region; for example, a landscape, lake,

administrative area, or state.–Geographic entity - A real-world feature that is of interest; something about which data is stored.–65 feature classes listed in USGS Gazetteer Feature Classes

But consider some physical definitions:• Potholes are defined variously as cracks (at least in the UK)

–of more than 30mm depth [North East Somerset, UK]–with a width of a ’large dinner plate’ (300mm) and the depth of–a ’golf ball’ (40mm) [Gloucestershire, UK]–with a width of a ’dinner plate’ (200mm) and a minimum depth of–a ’fist’ (40mm) [Worcestershire, UK]–depth of ’a pound coin and a 1p coin side by side’ [Coventry]

• These impact other domains.

• Due to a severe winter (Time) millions of potholes need to be repaired by the local councils (Social aspect) that are legally responsible for the roads maintenance) within their administrative boundaries (also Social) .

After KRZYSZTOF JANOWICZ (PSU/SB)



Ontology Defined Pothole? Bigger than…

OWL Ontology Defs don’t always fit Intended Conceptualization - Krzysztof Janowicz

We need Ontology Engineering practices as well as an Ontology Language to produce quality ontologies.



Two Part Process to Create a Quality Ontology

World Situations

InteractionBottle on

Table.Flower in

Vase“in” is

“invariant”

ConceptualizationC starts to model (part of) the world

Abstraction

Bottle on TableIntuition expressed in

semantics

Possible Models in variousLanguages

IntendedModelFitting

C

OntologyModels forDCommitments

OurOntologyProduct

(C for D with K in Ontology L)

Adapted liberally from Guarino’s 1998Formal Ontology in Information Systems(LOA group, Rome)

Models defines relationship between L syntax and interpretations

Pragmatic validation

Approximates





Backup Slides



Collaboration Competence Questions (CQ) about Collaboration Sessions (CS)

1. - What are the artifacts of a CS? 2. - Who are the participants of a CS? 3. - What are the objectives of a CS? 4. - When and where a CS happens? 5. - What are the rules of a CS? 6. - What kind of artifact a CS generates? 7. - What kind of participants a CS has? 8. - How the collaborations artifacts are generated? 9. - Who are the participants of a communication action? 10. - What is the protocol of a communication action? 11. - What is the language used to exchange messages among agents? 12. - What is the context of a communication action? 13. What is the media used on a communication action?

From Towards a Collaboration Ontology by Felipe F. Oliveira, Julio C. P. Antunes,, Renata Guizzardi, www.inf.ufes.br/~ffrechiani/files/collaborationontology.pdf



Start of a Collaboration Ontology

1. A collaboration session (CS) is an event composed of the actions

of its participants.

3. These actions are instantaneous events (atomic event) and they are named here participations (e.g., the action of sending or receiving a message).

1

2. A participationis performed by a participant which can have 1 or more participations.

3.

4. A CS has one or more objectives, defining its main purpose or goal with priorities..

2

4



In Context View - Models are Approximate

From “Theories, Models, Reasoning, Language, and Truth” by John F. Sowa.

See also Gary Berg-Cross.” A Pragmatic Approach to Discussing Intelligence in Systems”, PerMIS 2004 and my discussion of Scruffy Vs. Neat Approaches & Models in “Information Assimilation and Indexed Knowledge” presented at NIH’s BCIG 2002



Martin Doerr/DCC: Ontology Use & Digital Curation Processes

• Ontology-mediated communication may take place with regard to the form and the states of the digital curation processes, the formal structure of documents and metadata &..the subject or knowledge contained in the documents themselves.

• Ontology help in Design phase - system designers, digital curators & content experts can agree on their functional requirements, define data and metadata structures, and identify mechanisms for achieving interoperability and integration between heterogeneous – Prominent application is the indexing of content for resource

discovery

Manual for Digital Curation Centre (DCC)http://www.dcc.ac.uk/sites/default/files/documents/resource/curation-manual/chapters/ontologies/ontologies.pdf



Portion of CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model

5 of the main hierarchy branches are included in this view: E39 Actor, E51Contact Point, E41 Appellation, E53 Place, & E70 Thing.

Represented Concepts for reasoning about spatial information.http://www.cidoc-crm.org/docs/cidoc_crm_version_4.2.1.pdf



Pragmatic Problems of Semantic Interpretation of Natural Language Descriptions

What does preposition ‘in’ mean?

What does ‘in’ or “under” functionally mean?

“The cat is in the table”

John Bateman‘s Onto-Space work at the University of Bremen

Everyday uses of spatial prepositions (in) - ambiguous in spatial terms - meaningful as object' function- pragmatics

Although we would all like to think that we have a complete mental model all done up ready for use in our own heads, and writing axioms is just formalizing it, this isn’t borne out by experience.

The very act of writing down ones intuitive knowledge as formal sentences reveals aspects of your own thoughts which weren't apparent before,

much of what we know defies simply being written down formally.



Ontological Resources? relevant to describe cultural heritage collections ?

CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model Contains 80 classes & 130

http://owl.cs.manchester.ac.uk/browser/ontologies/1430325433/

ISO 21127 ?concepts



Federating Concepts from Local Partition

Gazetteer Content Standard – minimum definition with Name

After The Role of Ontology in Improving Gazetteer InteractionKrzysztof Janowicz & Carsten Keler, 2007

For GermanCommunity ofInterest - has particular Instancefootprints



Specializing Example: Evapotransparation Process

Devaraju and Kuhn 2010 developed a design pattern for evaporation as part of a Hydrology domain and mapped it to DOLCE.

“An instance of Vegetation is participant-in an instance of a Transpiration process.”



Dolce Ultra Lite (DUL) : 29 classes and 43 Properties

isDescribedBy The relation between an Entity & a Description: a Description gives a unity to a Collection of parts (the components), or constituents, by assigning a Role to each of them in the context of a whole Object (the system). A same Entity can be given different descriptions, for example, an old cradle can be given a unifying Description based on the original aesthetic design, the functionality it was built for, or a new aesthetic functionality in which it can be used as a flower pot.URI: http://www.loa-cnr.it/ontologies/DUL.owl#isDescribedBy see also Sensor Network Ontology



Nearness Model- uses Scale Model

4 Point Scale of nearest, near & close



There’s Various Work on Ontologically “Better” Taxonomies & Domain Models

Emergency Event Types Emergency Organization

Command Systems Emergency Equipment

Names and Descriptions Geospatial Coordinate

Systems (OGC paper at ISCRAM)

Units of Measurements

Kruchten, et al (2007, May). A human-centered conceptual model of disasters affecting critical infrastructures. Paper at the Intelligent Human Computer Systems for Crisis Response and Management 2007, combined with Sotoodeh http://www.ece.ubc.ca/~jiirp/JIIRP_Open_Publications/jiirp_i2c_042.pdf.

But many have semantic problems



Faceted Classification

Documents

Introduction for Gary Berg-Cross